Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
26 years of producing award winning entertainment including music, films, and games. Explore the timeline and photo galleries of my career on my website at https://robert-bowling.com. Ultimately, I'm a storyteller and technically-minded creative leader who thrives on being a mentor, motivator, and sparring partner with like-minded engineers and artists to build incredible experiences beloved by millions of people around the world. I was Creative Strategist of the Call of Duty franchise from Call of Duty 2 through the original Modern Warfare series. While I was grateful for the early success and experience, I was young and needed to explore other genres, other types of companies, and continue to challenge myself in new ways. I concepted an original IP called Human Element, and partnered with NEXON in Korea who strategically invested in my new studio and acquired the IP. This experience taught me the struggles of starting a studio from scratch and building a new intellectual property while also inspiring me to help solve the problems I faced as an indie developer. As Vice President of Humble Bundle, I started the publishing business and hired a small team to concept and launch Humble Monthly subscription service and fund project financing for Humble original games as a publisher, we sold the company to Ziff Davis / IGN Entertainment. I then wanted to tackle the same problem on mobile, working with Dan Fiden and Mike Ouye to launch The Label as a subsidiary of Fun Plus publishing. We built a subscription service focused on premium games (No IAP or Ads). I sought after an exclusive group of indie devs and pitched them on the vision. I signed and executive produced a slate of games from the top indie-developers in the world including WHAT THE GOLF?! with Triband studios and a prequel to The Binding of Isaac called The Legend of Bum-bo with Ed McMillen. After pitching to Google and Apple, we ultimately sold the games to Apple to launch Apple Arcade. The Label was sold to TEAM17. I have produced 11 full-length records, 2 EPs, and 1 compilation including two of Brooklyn Vegan's TOP 25 PUNK ALBUMS OF THE YEAR in 2025 through PNWK Records. In addition, I have produced several indie films and documentaries and currently voice the character LIEF in the children's animated series Windy Weatherfoot. I am thankful to create and to work with creators every single day and am always searching for ways to improve and grow as an artist, creator, builder, and entrepreneur. Please connect or reach out if I can assist you in any way.
A video game studio based in Los Angeles, California. See you back in SoCal starting July 1st!
I co-founded the label with my partner with the desire to help independent and DIY artists amplify their efforts and achieve their goals as artists. We focused entirely on artist development and album production. We are a not-for-profit label which directed 100% of profit back to the artists. I discovered and signed the following artists to record deals which included recording, marketing, and vinyl production for their debut full lengths or eps: Tiny Voices - Reasons I Won't Change FinalBossFight! - Life of my Dreams Aren't We Amphibians - Parade! Parade! Leisure Hour - ... and to think. Robo Pumpkin - Northwood (single) Potionseller - When They Get Old & BUZZARD Motion Sick - What It Feels Like To Be Alive & Motion Sick EP Excuse Me Who Are You? Amazing Transparent Man - 20th Anniversary The Casper Fight Scene - S/T Taken Alive - This World Is Exhausting 7" vinyl releases for: Kerosene Heights - Leaving EP I pitched playlists and built GTM strategies for album releases. I negotiated sync agreements to have Tiny Voices and FinalBossFight! appear in an [unannounced] video game releases. I successfully upstreamed two artists to larger record labels after developing their fanbase and presence taking artists from sub 1000 monthly listeners to over 57k monthly listeners within 12 months. Arranged multiple music festivals across the midwest with dedicated PNWK stages. I co-planned and co-hosted, with my partner, a PNWK Showcase for two days at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with over 1,000 attendees and seven bands performing. Managed event set-up including an outdoor stage construction and merch booths on location at the Rock Hall in Cleveland, OH. The event included a two-day schedule, coordinated in partnership with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Day 1 was an artist development day, closed to the public. Day 2 was an all-ages concert, featuring every band on the label on an outdoor stage at the Rock Hall plaza in front.
I led the creation of Weatherfoot Games, a subsidary of the children's entertainment company Weatherfoot LLC. I built and directly managed a small team of producers, level designs, engineers, and artists to build the official games for the Windy Weatherfoot animated series. I was a hands-on leader, also contributing to the creative direction, gameplay scripting, system design, and in-engine implementation of gameplay features. We launched a massive HUB-world which recreates the world of Windy Weatherfoot and focused on good natured and good to nature gameplay which is a core tenet of the Weatherfoot IP. Gameplay focused around quests you could preform, which we call "Good Deeds", to help the residents of the fictional town of Sunpike. I wrote design docs for gameplay features, scripted gameplay systems, and did environment design in-engine for several features including Happenin' Habitats: A tycoon mini-game where players spend their in-game currency to build safe animals sanctuaries, a requirement of this design was that it had to incorporate the themes of a musical track that appeared in the show called "The Animal Pack Song". I worked with our parent company to negotiate and implement brand activations and influencer partnerships into the game, including a dedicated level for Dental Digest. A children's dentist influencer with millions of followers. I hosted LIVE STREAMS with influencers in-character as LIEF from the animated series and created a cross-marketing campaign on their social feeds and channels. During my time on Windy Weatherfoot I learned a lot about toddler and pre-school gameplay requirements and restrictions and understanding user telemetry through the lens of safety, moderation, and a design princple of critical thinking reinforcement. We attracted over 200k players and have been featured by YouTube on two separate occassions, once during Animal Week and a second time during their Earth Day activations.
Was Studio Head focused on hiring and building a team of 55 full-time developers, directly managing department leads across Art, Animation, Engineering, Core Tech, Game Economy, and Platform services which included our web presence which included a large community component for early access players and founder pass holders. I designed and developed an early access go-to-market strategy for early playtesting and access called "Snapshots". Worked alongside department leadership to create a rolling 3-to-6 month release schedule for playtests with our community. I designed and led an ARG inspired by the game's lore to build a community discord to over 100k active users with 40k converted to paid early access players through three separate promotions including Founders Pass, Tower Keys, and Driver's Pass which each rewarded exclusive access to major new features or iterations of the game as it was being developed. I partnered with our production team and contracted engineers to develop a custom Discord app that would allow players to asynchronously play the ARG while driving a shared community goal. This activation included the creation of a text-based adventure played through Discord, custom videos, audio recordings, and a web interface that updated every 24 hours with new clues, details, and reactions to what the community had solved the prior day(s). I designed and documented a UGC permissionless publishing model and architecture to allow players and modders to launch and monetize their own maps, cosmetics and modes we called DCM (Deadrop Creator Modes). Built a digital magazine called the Variant Guide which was a visual explanation of all game updates and patch notes to showcase game dev progress to our early access players. Worked with internal departments to source screenshots, concepts, and external agency partners to editorialize it into a zine style digital release.
Lead designer and director of all game projects. Concepted and pitched game ideas for team alignment, but also presented to external partners, stakeholders, publishers, and IP licensors. Wrote design documentation and managed the internal GDD source material via a design wiki. Worked directly with department leads and independent contributors for design reviews and implementation reviews. Gave feedback on Technical Design Docs and worked with gameplay engineers closely on implementation. Did hands on design using Unreal Engine to build levels, implement outsourced or external art assets, environment design, and some blueprint work. Built prototypes and vertical slices for unannounced projects with major external stakeholder and IP licensors. Concepted an original idea and design for an official The Purge online survival game and successfully negotiated a publishing deal with Universal Pictures. Built a vertical slice and designed a procedural world events system which intelligently spawns Purge gangs, survivor quests, loot, and dynamically changes paths and POIs around the game's city on spawn, creating a highly replyable world that is unique everytime its played. Designed and documented, including managing the spreadsheet for balancing a complex NPC personality system called "Needs/Mood" which was used to craft a realistic behavior tree for enemy NPCs as well as AI-controlled survivor allies. This system deteremined when people would attack, flee, seek help, team up or abandon your group in real-time based on game data and their dynamically chosen personality traits. Led design and in-engine world building for an unannounced collaboration with actor and rapper ICE T. Worked closely with stakeholders to prototype an original IP set in a fictionalized 1990's Los Angeles. This first person shooter was a single player campaign with an original soundtrack and in-game cameos from GRAMMY award winning hip-hop artists. Hosted internal game jams for new ideas.
Joined as an advisor to help the team with securing business, negotiating their co-dev work, and build a strategy to allow them to transition from a co-dev studio to a full fledge indie studio working on thier own original IPs. Worked closely with their executive team on business development, publisher relations, and game direction. Alongside our provided legal counsel, we connected them with top IP holders and publishers, helped concept original game ideas, build out their central tech strategy for a proprietary procedural tech layer, and secure prototype agreements with publishers to fund new IP. Helped the team negotiate and project plan for licensed VR ride experiences for Dave & Busters locations including the Jurassic World, Star Trek, MIB, and Terminator experiences. This work required the team to have a fully operational VR ride in their warehouse and adapt to cutting edge VR systems which interacte with motion based hardware and ride mechanics with session based scoring and accolades.